Personal communication devices, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers and two-way radios are often carried in an accessory, such as a body worn holster, for portability. Many of these devices have exposed keypads. In general, personal communication devices in their holsters are susceptible to key presses resulting in undesired operation. Such undesired operation can result in unwanted calls being placed, the device being inadvertently powered down, personal memory being removed, and other problems. Personal memory being removed results in the loss of personalized settings.
Phones with exposed keypads may allow the user to lock the keypad, but doing so typically requires multiple keystrokes to engage the lock and unlock feature. Given the usual number of keystrokes needed to perform this task, many users ignore or forget the lockout feature altogether. Furthermore, current technology provides no convenient or robust means for replacing the device's personalized settings once lost.
Reprogramming personal settings on a communication device can be impractical. Users are often forced to manually re-enter their personalized settings, which is very time consuming, or have the settings downloaded via a computer. The reprogramming of personal settings is not just an issue when the settings have been lost but also when multiple users want to share the same device. Swapping personalized settings, such as address book, preferred ring tone, speed dial numbers, etc., can be very cumbersome requiring inconvenient reprogramming of the settings as mentioned above.
Accordingly, there is a need to protect personalized settings in a communication device. A means of preventing loss of the personalized settings and facilitating the exchange of personalized settings amongst multiple users would be highly beneficial.